I'm bored when I heal because I need more complex DPS rotations

[ForsakenRoe]

It's something to do at least. We've been exhausting the reasons why healer design is crap for six years now. If it weren't for annoying narcissistic Sylphie trolls we'd be here, sitting in a circle, going "still sucks for the same reason right?" "Yup." "Anyone got a question for the next live letter?" "Don't worry, I already know Yoshi-P's answer to whatever question you're going to formulate."

You make it sound like we're the Ea, just accepting the futility of even bothering to try and rebel against the fate of the role. Nothing to do except embrace the nihility of it all, and watch as the hotbars become more and more barren of damage skills, and more and more bloated with excessive healing we don't need. We're not waiting for heat-death, we're waiting for heal-death

[Semirhage]

You make it sound like we're the Ea, just accepting the futility of even bothering to try and rebel against the fate of the role. Nothing to do except embrace the nihility of it all, and watch as the hotbars become more and more barren of damage skills, and more and more bloated with excessive healing we don't need. We're not waiting for heat-death, we're waiting for heal-death

Well, yes? Healing has become worse and worse for three expansions straight now. Any complaint we have is dismissed. Feedback is ignored. We might get a tweak or two through the cracks but Square loooooooves its current healing direction which is.... the opposite of fun. I've heard the same 10-15 discussions on how healers could be made more engaging a dozen times on these forums. They're great suggestions. They weren't implemented the first time they were mass upvoted, nor the second, nor third...

Discussion is great! Square is still going to ignore you. The 2.5 job designers they have are uninterested in the healer role.

[IceBlueNinja]

The only time I was shocked healing maybe a lil engaging is squadran. I never got into grand company stuff much until I saw a friend with the cool emotes who told me to do some, compare to trust system that avoids and do mech. Goodness squadron really kept me on my toe as healer. they dont do mechs, the dps or heal( when i tried dps) drops dead to avoidables and the tank is poor on keep aggro or doing migi.

I tried as a dps and again healer and other dps would die to 2nd boss in aurum vale cause not moving out of mechs I had no choice but to be healer myself lol. Even then as healer am ripping aggro off tank. Fun

[Mithron]

I tried as a dps and again healer and other dps would die to 2nd boss in aurum vale cause not moving out of mechs I had no choice but to be healer myself lol. Even then as healer am ripping aggro off tank. Fun

It's amazing you need a team that sucks just to have fun as healer in this game.

Which is why healers need more complex DPS rotations so they can have fun when not healing in the vast majority of this game's content.

[Ashemmi]

There are many layers to this problem, depending on your playstyle and the playstyle of those you move through various aspects of the game with -- your perspective changes.

I still see many healers who don't hit the DPS buttons that are in place now. A good number of them. I've worked with players who get stressed over the complication of DPS on top of Healing. These are your casual healing purists. Complicating healing further creates more stress here.

I still hear complaints from some DPS and Tanks when going full glare mage mode and they aren't riding 100% health. I hear it from other healers as well. "Aren't you going to heal?" I've hit as many buttons, likely more... I'm using my oGCD and see the other healer still attempting to proc cure 1. Adding more buttons to slow down the average player still creates stress here. There was a post pages back about returning to the rotation after movement or emergency heals. They happen.

Stronger players, especially when playing with other strong players... Yes, this can get boring and dull, especially in standard content with some fairly skilled tanks being able to heal themselves entirely. Dia, Glare .... Holy SPAM... Help is needed for the brain numbing which happens. I have friends who will only see benediction, or the obligatory "git gud" regen when they reflex check me. These aren't the players that you tend to run across day to day.

This is where everyone splits. The answer isn't just to complicate the DPS rotation for healers. In general, for two sets of players, this will make the job more undesirable or cause problems for others. It doesn't really fit in to the idea of "Casual Gaming". In harder content, there is a place for it. Better ways to help the party.

The old FFXI had something here, sub jobs. Not favorable, again because of casual play. Players essentially were /forced/ to level specific jobs to augment their main.

What if there were a way to pull in one or two abilities from another job you've leveled? Leylines before Misery or Holy Spam... Game on.

[Mithron]

This is where everyone splits. The answer isn't just to complicate the DPS rotation for healers. In general, for two sets of players, this will make the job more undesirable or cause problems for others. It doesn't really fit in to the idea of "Casual Gaming". In harder content, there is a place for it. Better ways to help the party.

I don't think it's an issue. The casual/bad players would still rarely or poorly DPS on healers but still overheal (or otherwise do nothing while waiting to heal), while the good players could have more fun in their DPS contributions. The skill floor would increase so bad healers who do bad DPS would be doing even worse DPS as a result, but I think that's a willing trade off for above average players to actually have more fun and be encouraged to play healer more often. The casuals probably wouldn't even notice a difference at all.

[IDontPetLalas]

I still see many healers who don't hit the DPS buttons that are in place now. A good number of them. I've worked with players who get stressed over the complication of DPS on top of Healing. These are your casual healing purists. Complicating healing further creates more stress here.

I still hear complaints from some DPS and Tanks when going full glare mage mode and they aren't riding 100% health. I hear it from other healers as well. "Aren't you going to heal?" I've hit as many buttons, likely more... I'm using my oGCD and see the other healer still attempting to proc cure 1. Adding more buttons to slow down the average player still creates stress here. There was a post pages back about returning to the rotation after movement or emergency heals. They happen.

Stronger players, especially when playing with other strong players... Yes, this can get boring and dull, especially in standard content with some fairly skilled tanks being able to heal themselves entirely. Dia, Glare .... Holy SPAM... Help is needed for the brain numbing which happens. I have friends who will only see benediction, or the obligatory "git gud" regen when they reflex check me. These aren't the players that you tend to run across day to day.

This is where everyone splits. The answer isn't just to complicate the DPS rotation for healers. In general, for two sets of players, this will make the job more undesirable or cause problems for others. It doesn't really fit in to the idea of "Casual Gaming". In harder content, there is a place for it. Better ways to help the party.

The old FFXI had something here, sub jobs. Not favorable, again because of casual play. Players essentially were /forced/ to level specific jobs to augment their main.

What if there were a way to pull in one or two abilities from another job you've leveled? Leylines before Misery or Holy Spam... Game on.

The players that don't hit DPS buttons now won't hit any new DPS buttons.

I don't know about how often you hear about these "why aren't you healing " issues, but if no one is dying and you (global you) are using your tools skillfully, all I can say is that there is no reason to feel stressed. Adding more buttons isn't the the problem, it's (potentially) a lack of self-confidence for some people.

Finally, I don't seen anyone asking for complicated DPS rotations, however "casual gaming" doesn't mean that someone doesn't want to be able to improve, or to have flexibility in their job. Right now the job design really doesn't offer much once someone has been playing it for awhile, this is what a number of people are asking for. This should not intimidate anyone who is new to the job, or who wants to ignore these options- but if someone is ready to stretch a bit, at least they can use them.

[ForsakenRoe]

I still hear complaints from some DPS and Tanks when going full glare mage mode and they aren't riding 100% health. I hear it from other healers as well. "Aren't you going to heal?" I've hit as many buttons, likely more... I'm using my oGCD and see the other healer still attempting to proc cure 1. Adding more buttons to slow down the average player still creates stress here. There was a post pages back about returning to the rotation after movement or emergency heals. They happen.

People need to stop talking in extremes. There's no binary of 'does not press damage button EVER' vs 'Is a 99 parsing damage god', there is an entire scale of skill levels in between. If someone is skilled enough at healer to do damage now, adding new buttons to the DPS rotation is going to throw them off for a bit, yes. Keywords, for a bit. With practice they will get comfortable with the new rotation, just as DPS have to every time there's a new expansion, and a new rotation to learn. Frankly, the idea of 'we cannot add new buttons to healer DPS rotation because it'd be too much for players to handle' is insulting, not just to vets who can definitely handle it, but also to the casual players you're trying to be the champion for, because some of them WOULD be able to handle it given they practice, and these 'protect the babby players!' sentiments just keep them in the nest, and stifle their growth.

Also, if someone says 'why arent you healing' when you are doing healing, if they aren't dead, ask them 'but did you die?'. The only HP that matters is the last one. I don't think I've EVER been told to 'stop damage and heal' like this.

This is where everyone splits. The answer isn't just to complicate the DPS rotation for healers. In general, for two sets of players, this will make the job more undesirable or cause problems for others. It doesn't really fit in to the idea of "Casual Gaming". In harder content, there is a place for it. Better ways to help the party.

There's two main schools of thought on how to make healer more interesting as a role: Add more damage to heal, or add more damage skills to use. We've seen this tier what happens when there's more damage to heal: even more 'fairweather' healers quit because they cannot keep up. I, and many other people asking for change, have said many times: We think adding more damage skills to use is the solution to this problem, because it allows the 'healing side' of the kit to remain as easy to access as it currently is. New healers would not need to feel stressed, because they can ignore the DPS stuff entirely when they start. As they play through the NINETY LEVELS of story, they can start to experiment in dungeons (doubly so now there's trusts that won't yell at them for mistakes) about when they can afford to maybe throw a DOT in here, a Glare in there.

No, the real issue I think is the players who flat out refuse to improve. The ones who get snappy at anyone who dares to suggest any change to their playstyle. Not even 'hey did you know you can do damage', I mean if you suggest 'hey try using Regen instead of Cure 1, it heals more for the same MP cost' and they say 'shut up I know how to heal'. The other issue is players who defend 'strawman casuals', as you are doing here. These 'casuals who can't keep up with having new buttons' do not exist in the numbers you are trying to imply. Yes, there is a non-zero number of them. But there's plenty of casuals who COULD keep up with the new buttons, if they were given the chance to practice and improve. All posts like this are misguided in my view. You're like a mother bird trying to keep the chicks in the nest. They never learn to fly if they don't leave the nest. By insisting that we can't have anything that could require the player practice and become more skilled, you're just advocating for a specific skill ceiling to limit everyone, rather than the skill ceiling be decided by the job's design. And ironically, we can see what happens because of this smothering attitude: This tier, where players who were not skilled enough to handle heavier incoming damage. Because SE kept them in the metaphorical nest for all of SHB, and EW's first tier. So when this tier came along and asked more of the player, many couldn't keep up, and so quit in frustration.

The training wheels have to come off at some point.

What if there were a way to pull in one or two abilities from another job you've leveled? Leylines before Misery or Holy Spam... Game on.

We used to have that, it meant healers HAD to play some THM to get Swiftcast, or melee HAD to play DRG to get Blood for Blood. This would be the same, forcing people to play classes they dont want to, to get 'essential' extra skills to cross-class over.

Finally, I don't seen anyone asking for complicated DPS rotations, however "casual gaming" doesn't mean that someone doesn't want to be able to improve, or to have flexibility in their job. Right now the job design really doesn't offer much once someone has been playing it for awhile, this is what a number of people are asking for. This should intimidate anyone who is new to the job, or who wants to ignore these options- but if someone is ready to stretch a bit, at least they can use them.

I suggested a change to WHM that adds one extra GCD instead of Glare every 15s and changed the DOT to be refreshed every 12s instead of 30. Other people have suggested other things, whether for WHM or other healers, but all of the suggestions are not DPS level intricate rotations. At most, it's 'give SCH its DOTs back'. This mentality of 'oh the healers are asking for more DPS complexity? Surely this means they're demanding super technical stuff like DRG buff/life alignment, or RPR double communio', like no man I'm asking for ONE extra GCD on WHM and rescaling the DOT duration so the class feels more bursty.

[Heroman3003]

Also, if someone says 'why arent you healing' when you are doing healing, if they aren't dead, ask them 'but did you die?'. The only HP that matters is the last one. I don't think I've EVER been told to 'stop damage and heal' like this.

This only works on players who actually UNDERSTAND that the last HP is all that matters. Factually, the problem isn't that healers wouldnt be able to heal as well, its that healers are already THE role that always gets the blame when things go poorly in general. Excacerbating it further with any further with even MORE things they not just 'can' but 'MUST' do to not fail would make it only worse and put even more casual people off of touching the role because of responsibility weight. Tank is already struggling because of that, beng least generally populated role in queues. Making it into Tank AND Healer is not going to solve any role population issues.

[Semirhage]

This only works on players who actually UNDERSTAND that the last HP is all that matters. Factually, the problem isn't that healers wouldnt be able to heal as well, its that healers are already THE role that always gets the blame when things go poorly in general. Excacerbating it further with any further with even MORE things they not just 'can' but 'MUST' do to not fail would make it only worse and put even more casual people off of touching the role because of responsibility weight. Tank is already struggling because of that, beng least generally populated role in queues. Making it into Tank AND Healer is not going to solve any role population issues.

I mean, if we're going that route why not replace healers with Trust NPCs? Or permanent mid-strength passive regen effects? If the design parameters which define healers boil down to

• can't ever fail
• must be so easy that the most nervous newbie isn't frightened by Aglaia
• must have no skill ceiling because new players have to feel like they've reasonably mastered it after an instance or two

Then what we're describing isn't a fully-formed RPG class that a human being should be expected to play. We're describing a sub-10 line script.